Presidential Forecast - 7/18 - Status Quo

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Update 7/18: Latest projection: Obama leads 305-233, no change from the July 15 or July 13 forecasts. When the primaries ended in early June, it was thought we'd have a month of movement, followed by status quo until the VP picks and the conventions. That seems to be where we are.

Please also check out our Senate Forecast and House Forecast.

Map showing consensus of sources. This table will show a state Blue or Red if a majority of the sources show it Leaning or Solid for that candidate.

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

Unanimous solid states, not shown in the table below:
Solid Obama: CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NY, RI, VT - 150 EVs.
Solid McCain: AL, ID, KS, KY, NE, OK, TN, UT, WY - 58 EVs.

The sources are sorted by each projection's estimate of Obama's Electoral Votes (Algorithm at bottom). The states are sorted by the number of electoral votes.

DCW Presidential Forecast
State	EVs	Open Left	Elect. Proj.	EV. com	RCP	FHQ	RM	538.com	CNN	NBC	....
Date		7/18	7/18	7/18	7/15	7/16	7/16	7/18	6/27	7/9
Obama-Strong (O)		227	204	211	153	175	210	210	153	168
Obama-Lean (OL)		66	60	35	102	47	83	63	78	42
Tossup (T)		61	103	114	120	167	18	38	113	139
McCain-Lean (ML)		97	98	95	73	58	62	70	69	53
McCain-Strong (M)		87	73	83	90	91	165	154	125	136
Obama Total		293	264	246	255	222	293	273	231	210
McCain Total		184	171	178	163	149	227	224	194	189
Obama Est.		330	323	315	309	308	298	292	286	282
Texas	34	ML	ML	ML	ML	ML	M	M	M	M
Florida	27	ML	T	ML	T	T	ML	ML	T	T
Pennsylvania	21	OL	OL	T	OL	T	OL	OL	OL	T
Ohio	20	OL	T	T	T	T	OL	T	T	T
Michigan	17	O	OL	OL	OL	T	OL	OL	T	T
Georgia	15	ML	ML	ML	ML	ML	M	M	ML	ML
New Jersey	15	O	O	O	OL	OL	O	O	OL	OL
N. Carolina	15	T	T	T	T	T	ML	ML	ML	ML
Virginia	13	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
Indiana	11	T	ML	T	T	T	M	ML	ML	ML
Missouri	11	T	T	T	T	T	ML	ML	T	T
Washington	11	O	O	O	OL	O	O	O	OL	O
Arizona	10	ML	ML	M	M	M	M	M	M	M
Minnesota	10	O	O	O	OL	O	O	O	OL	OL
Wisconsin	10	O	OL	O	OL	OL	O	O	OL	OL
Colorado	9	OL	T	T	T	T	OL	OL	T	T
Louisiana	9	M	M	M	ML	M	M	M	ML	M
S. Carolina	8	ML	ML	ML	M	T	M	M	M	M
Iowa	7	OL	OL	O	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	T
Oregon	7	O	O	OL	OL	OL	O	O	OL	OL
Arkansas	6	M	ML	M	M	M	M	M	ML	M
Mississippi	6	M	ML	ML	ML	ML	M	M	M	M
Nevada	5	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
New Mexico	5	OL	OL	OL	T	OL	OL	OL	ML	T
W. Virginia	5	M	ML	ML	M	M	M	M	ML	M
Maine	4	O	O	O	OL	O	O	O	OL	O
NH	4	OL	O	O	T	T	OL	OL	T	T
Alaska	3	ML	M	T	ML	ML	M	M	M	ML
Delaware	3	O	O	OL	O	OL	O	O	O	O
Montana	3	T	T	OL	ML	T	ML	ML	ML	ML
N. Dakota	3	T	M	T	ML	T	ML	ML	M	ML
S. Dakota	3	M	ML	T	M	M	ML	M	M	ML
		Open Left	Elect. Proj.	EV. com	RCP	FHQ	RM	538.com	CNN	NBC	....

Notes:
538 - FiveThirtyEight - Safe and Likely mapped to Strong (O or M), Lean to Lean (OL or ML), Tossup to Tossup (T)
CNN - Safe mapped to Strong, Leaning to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
Elect. Proj. - Election Projection - Solid and Strong mapped to Strong, Moderate to Lean, Weak to Tossup
EV.com - Electoral-Vote.com - Strong mapped to Strong, Weak to Lean, Barely and Tossup to Tossup
FHQ - FrontLoading HQ - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup (Dem and Rep) to Tossup
NBC - Base mapped to strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
OpenLeft - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
RM - Rasmussen - Safe and Likely mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
RCP - RealClearPolitics - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup

Here are the states that span 3 categories.

• Alaska: Now only 1 at Tossup, 4 at McCain-Strong. Rasmussen's own poll shows McCain only up by 4, yet they still have AK as Likely-Republican, which we convert to McCain-Strong.
• Indiana: 4 at Tossup, Rasmussen at McCain-Strong.
• Iowa: One at Obama-Strong, NBC and CNN still calling it a Tossup.
  
• Michigan: 1 Obama-Strong, 3 Tossups.
  
• Montana : EV.com at Obama-Lean, 5 at McCain-Lean. EV.com will exactly follow the latest poll if no other poll has been published within the week.
  
• New Hampshire: 4 at Tossup, 2 at Obama-Strong.
  
• New Mexico: Six projections have it as Obama-Lean, CNN has it at McCain-Lean. Two recent polls show Obama up by 3 and 8 points.
  
• North Dakota - Three now at tossup. Now that we finally have a recent poll, all tied at 43, it's the 2 McCain-Strongs, Election Projection and CNN that are the outliers. EP uses a formula that essentially treats the 2004 results as a recent state poll (modified by differences in the national numbers, which would move the ND results from 2004 by 5-6 points). But until more ND polls come out, the '04 results are going to be a drag on their projection. This is also effecting their Alaska projection. CNN - well, they're just lazy.
  
• Oregon - 1 Tossup, 3 Obama-Strong.
• Pennsylvania: 1 Obama-Strong, 3 Tossups.
• South Carolina: 1 Tossup, 5 McCain-Strong
• South Dakota: 1 Tossup, 5 McCain-Strong
  

We're purposely ignoring Maine and Nebraska CD splits for now to keep things simple. We'll add them in later if we need to.

The overall projection is just a straight average of each projections' estimate of Electoral Votes (EVs) for each candidate. For each projection other than FiveThirtyEight, we give Obama 100% of the EVs in a state that is solid for him, 80% of the EVs for a leaner, 50% of the EVs for a Tossup, 20% of the EVs for state that is McCain-Lean, and 0% of the Solid McCain states. Exact opposite for McCain. For FiveThirtyEight, we use their overall estimate of Obama's EVs, not the state-by-state categories.